


You and Me, Well, We Ain't Like Most People

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Justified [7]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Also some mention of off-screen murders committed by one of our heroes, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Cuddling & Snuggling, Declarations Of Love, Desire, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Family, Flirting, Fluff and Smut, Love, M/M, Plans For The Future, References to Billy's in-fic history and all that implies, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Teasing, Trust, Waffle House: A Southern Gothic, no biggie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:09:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Billy and Goody get re-acquainted with each other. A lot. In various places on various surfaces. To varying levels of success (really high and fucking insanely high respectively).





	1. I Know This Ain't Exactly How Most People Do It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decoy_ocelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decoy_ocelot/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just finished my last assignment as a grad student yesterday! Finally free! And that called for celebration!
> 
> Also celebration worthy is Decoy_Ocelot's birthday and she wanted sex with feelings and some call backs. She got it.

> **Boyd:** This is why we're doing the things we're doing. It's for the future. Three generations' time, we'll be an old family name. Won't nobody think twice about their kid and a-a Crowder kid playing together after school.  
>  **Ava:** Kids? What are you saying?  
>  **Boyd:** Look underneath… I know this ain't exactly how most people do it, professing their love over a box of cash. But the way I see it, Ava Crowder, you and me, well, we ain't like most people.  
>  **Ava** : No, we ain't.

- **Justified** _4.06  Foot Chase_

* * *

 

When Joshua the AUSA finally packs up the explosion of paperwork, the lunch crowd is just emptying. Billy tosses back the dregs of his third cup of coffee and sets the plastic logo stamped mug back on his plate upside down on his plate. Pale, brown, coffee-flavored sugar water seeped around the edges and feels as hollow has the cup.

He expected the empty space that’s formed in him from this. He’s not robot or a Vulcan. When he agreed to tell Goody’s lawyer about his life, he’d thought the emotional pain it cost him would leave him feeling rough, scraped-raw like a melon rind and screaming. Reliving his adolescence had instead hollowed him out to the smooth beauty of a trumpet’s horn. Cathartic is probably the word a smarter man would use.

Goody’s fingers are laced through his under the table but he’s not holding him up. The weight Billy always carries isn’t quite so heavy in this moment and he doesn’t need it. Fuck, he wants to though and for now, he gets to have it, leaning easily in towards the window to rest his head on Goody’s strong shoulder. This gets him a gentle nuzzle that makes him feel fuzzy and soft in his chest even as his jeans tighten.

“I’m going to the restroom.”

“Okay.” He kisses Billy’s temple. Right out in public. “I’ll pay and meet you out front.” Fucking shit. He feels like he’s been hit by a comet because of this man. _His_ fucking man.

He slides out of the booth and leans in one hand on the table. “You not coming with me?”

Goody looks up from the check at that. “Billy?”

“I offered you bathroom head. Let’s go.“

Goody gapes at him.. “When?"

Billy doesn’t smile like a lazy cat on purpose. It just happens because he’s a sentimental fucker who is so thirsty for his man’s cock he’s going to get him in one of the same bathrooms he’s washed his hair and underwear in a dozen times before - just like he’d offered that first night last century.

“20 years ago.” He grabs Goodnights wrist and tugs. “I’ll even give you the Friends and Family discount."

“”I don’t know, cher,” Goody says tugging back gently. “I don't want you to have to go in to work on a Saturday.”

“What can I say?” He gives Goody a slow smile that’s a little mean. “Nothing wrong with a man taking pleasure in his work. I won’t deny my own personal desire to turn each sin against the sinner.”

“Are you- Billy, we watched that one together.” He groans but he stops protesting and lets himself be hauled out of the seat. “You made me sit through it it and wouldn’t let me tap out at the sloth guy. You cannot think that is hot.”

“I think it’s funny.” Billy says giving him one more tug before dropping his wrist and taking a step back. “And you are the kind of weirdo who gets turned on by humor. Meet me in the women’s room and I’ll make you really laugh.”

“Women’s roo-“

“It’s cleaner.” This is a fact of life created by western masculinity that he has never been ashamed to take advantage of. If that fucking bigoted North Carolina bathroom bill spreads, he won't be able to use the much more hygienic women’s bathrooms at truck stops and diners to wash his hair and face between johns without risking arrest anymore and he’s going to be pissed.

He doesn’t look back as he makes his way to the heavy black door separating the main restaurant from the bathrooms and back kitchen entrance. He pushes it open and slides inside the women’s bathroom, leaning against the sink, out of view of the door (just in case).

Billy would like to say he isn’t worried about being left in there alone but he is. Every moment that feels like years ago in Georgia has a dozen more that reminds him that they’re in the present in Texas and make him doubt that things are really the same. He doesn’t have time to even get properly nervous before Goody is slipping inside in a fit of muffled giggles.

“Billy Rocks,” he whispers gleefully. “You left me at alone at the table with the worst hard-on I’ve had in years, you villain.”

Billy grins as he crowds Goody back against the door and flips the deadbolt. “Well let me get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness.”

The feel of bone hitting tile is a familiar one for Billy. Impact vibrates through his thighs and jars his hips but with his hands hooked in Goody’s belt loops, it’s satisfying sort of shock instead of painful.

He ducks forward and undoes the button of Goody’s slacks (fuck they’ve reached the age where Goody has more slacks than jeans; how did that happen?) before he can protest. It’s a dirty trick, one hard earned. He’s used it more times than he can count but has enjoyed it less than a handful. Goody’s stunned expression every time he does it is a fucking delight. The zipper is cake by comparison.

He used to hate this, the vulnerability and rawness of having his face in a guy’s crotch. God, he used to fucking hate it so much. He still does, actually, when it’s for work, for information, to get out of a tight spot. But he rubs his cheek against Goody’s boxer briefs, grey cotton that he watched him put back on this morning, just to hear his strong, soft soldier groan. The sound and the jump of his cock against him gets Billy from zero to gets hard as a fucking rock in-between one breath and the next because shit, when it’s Goodnight, he loves it. He fucking loves it.

If this were a client, he’d go for a hands-free move to encourage reciprocal lack of contact but he wants Goody to touch him so he digs his hand in to pull out his dripping cock. Goody sounds strangled at the contact, frantic, but he’s so careful as he reaches out and pets him from the crown of his head back to the place where his bun is tightly tied. It’s a soothing contrast to the fire burning in his veins that makes him feel like liquid mercury in the thermometer of a blast furnace, shooting up and breaking the containing glass. He’s going to shatter if he doesn’t get him in his mouth, doesn’t follow through on half a lifetime of foreplay right this instant.

He puts years of trauma and drudgery to work on his love and it’s so different. It’s like vengeance and vindication rolled up in one pleasurable circuit. He doesn’t get off on giving head, not like Goody does, but knowing that everything he went to can make Goody so hot that he has to shove his fist in his mouth to keep from screaming feels somehow worth it - at least in this moment.

Goody strokes his forehead with his thumb, then over the shell of his left ear, back and forth again and again in time to the bobbing of Billy’s head. The shock of deja vu makes him draw in a sharp breath and despite himself, Goody surges forward, choking him.

He can normally take it. He can normally breathe through the stuffed feeling but he can’t. It’s too much. Everything is too fucking much and he has to pull back.

Tears sting his eyes as he coughs. Goody cups his chin with rifle calloused fingers and tips his face up to look at him. “You okay?”

“I gotta stop.”

“Okay.”

“You wanna come on my face instead?” he offers, blinking away the traitorous wetness in his eyes.

Goody laughs at that, loud and sharp, smiling wide and bright. “Do you want me to?”

Yes is on the tip of his tongue. Billy has wanted that from him before. Not now though. Not like this. It’s a little too close to the bad old days for comfort. He shakes his head. He just wants Goody.

“Good,” Goody declares, pulling him to his feet by the fabric of his shirt. “Revved my engine, good and hot, Billy Rocks. Now you have to fucking take me for a ride.”

Billy sucks Goody’s tongue into his mouth for a full thirty seconds before yanking him away from the door. The flavor of Goody’s pre-cum is still lingering on his gums and he wants Goody to fucking taste it. He pushes Goody to the corner opposite the door where a small shelf protrudes from the wall in a flat, diagonal edge. He’s thrown his shit on the same sort of shelf in countless bathrooms all over the south over the years and now he wants to see it hold up Goody while he fucks him.

He turns Goody bodily around and presses his stomach against the wood of the meager counter. He bites down on Goody’s shoulder through the thin cotton of his shirt and darkens the sky blue fabric with his saliva. “Don’t touch anything but that.”

“Not even the wall?”

“Not your dick. Not me. Not the wall. Nothing. You keep your hands on the counter or at your side.”

Yanking down Goody’s pants and underwear in one sharp move makes him feel (for one brief second at least) like he fell into an 80s coming of age movie. Then Goody is shoving a condom in his face and all memory of the Goonies and Stand By Me are wiped from his mind in the face of that hungry hole just begging for him to fill it up.

“Please,” Goody begins and Billy bites down again.

“Shhh. We’re in public, baby.”

That earned him a whole body shiver. He didn’t used pet names often. That was Goody’s game. Billy liked to know who he was in bed with, thank you very fucking much, but Goody. Fuck, they melted him and when applied correctly could light him up like a bomb in a fireworks outlet store.

“Help me.”

That ruins him. Goody needing him when he has so much already is the most amazing power he’s ever felt. He feels beautiful and strong and so, so gentle when he does. He covers his cock, slots his chest against Goody’s back, and does as he’s asked and covers his mouth with his left hand.

He spits into his right and smears it Goody’s furl, still a little tacky from the night before. It gets leftover lube all slippery again and with whats on the condom already, it's enough for him to slide in smooth and easy. Goody moans into his palm as he buries himself to the hilt, vibration tickling the skin there.

“That’s it,” Billy soothes, loving the way Goody goes lose in his embrace, relaxed and secure. “Just ride it out for me, baby.”

Goody never wanted nicknames. Nicknames had been for johns but Goody loved little gestures of affections. He hated the connection but he longed for it and he was a regular cockslut, Billy thought, his style dirty and fun. Riling him up was its own turn on.

After a long haze of thrusting and rolling pleasure, twin drops of water hit the side of his hand where it still covers Goody’s mouth. He’s crying, his muffled pleas for more struggling out past the gag. That’s where he wants him, blissed out and shattered, and Billy wants to fuck him through his orgasm and come in the aftershocks as his pretty hips spasm.

He twists his hand and puts three fingers on Goody’s lips. Goody sucks them in to the knuckles, letting out a slurpy moan around them. The other he wraps around that pretty, neat cock and began to stroke in time to the rhythm of his thrusts. Goody’s tears came a bit faster and Billy smiles into the color of Goody’s shirt.

“Can’t get more of me in you than this, Goodnight. You’re all fucked out now so come on, baby.” He kisses the shell of Goody’s ear in reply to Goody’s earlier caress. “Come for me.”

Goody’s orgasm hits him so hard he nearly slams his head against the wall, the fingers gagging him the only thing to save him. His body spasmed like he was being shocked, jerking and contracting inside and out. Billy’s cock was being caressed in a tight slick grip of muscle and heat. He comes before Goody’s balls finish emptying onto the floor. He feels like he’s going blind with it.

When he can see again, his world is full of the hair on the back of Goody’s neck and the smell of his sweat and the sound of him sobbing out the aftershocks of pleasure around Billy’s fingers. It’s too beautiful for him to bear.

“I love you,” Billy whispers into the skin of his nape. He pulls his fingers out of his mouth and traces his lips. “God I fucking love you.”

“Cher,” Goody sighs, tipping his head back to rest on his shoulder, heavy and trusting. “Can I touch now?”

“Yeah, Goodnight. You can touch me.”

Both hands move at once. The right wraps around his neck and the other finds Billy’s where it still wrapped loosely around his soft cock, tugging it away to lace their fingers together. They stand half dressed and tangled up for a long moment before Goody turns his head and sighs. “Let’s go home.”

“Where’s that,” Billy asks, rubbing in his nose under his ear lobe.

“My house.”

That sounds dangerous as fuck, if you ask Billy. But Goody’s the lawman, not him and since he gave him his trust, Goody’s never given him reason to doubt.

“Okay. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
>   * I partied in Ft. Benning and Columbus last weekend. Oh. My. God. It's just as tragic as I imagined. Great bar though 
>   * The dive-iest of the dive bars in Columbus is, literally, next to the Waffle House.  
>  *waves arms at Nev* I MADE IT HAPPEN WITH MY WRITING, NEV! I'M MAGIC AND I STILL GOT IT!
>   * Waffle House Bathrooms are All Exactly he Same.
>   * And the ledge looks like this. You know you know it.  
> 
>   * You absolutely can reactivate water-based lube with [spit](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/how-lubricant-can-transform-your-sex-life-10493538.html). 
> 



	2. This is why we're doing the things we're doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting, all 4 of you who are reading things. My computer was taken from me for repairs until yesterday and there went all my noble ambitions.

There are scars on Goody’s back that weren’t there the last time they spent a weekend in bed together like this. Most of them are thin, silver things, badges earned from hard landings and bad scrapes. There’s one starburst on his lower back, though, that’s two and a half inches above his right kidney that could only have come from a gunshot exiting the body. It looks like a Van Gogh, rough edges surrounding a beautifully intense center of life and light. 

He traces the ridged skin with the blunt edge of the sleek mother-of-pearl handled hunting knife he’d picked up on his way south from that dead end in Vermont to Beaumont.

The sharp tip scrapes over the sensitive tissue light as a breath and makes Goody’s whole body give a satisfying shiver. He gets a swat towards his face for his efforts. He catches the hand and nips at the tip of Goody’s index finger. 

“Quit it. I’ll never get through at this rate.” 

Sunday Joshua gave them a new stack of files and Billy is getting bored. It’s Tuesday already, almost a week since they found each other again, and Goody won’t let him do anything that will disrupt his focus when he’s working. 

That’s a fucking shame because Goody’s skin is everywhere _and_ his TV is fifty-five inches of high definition glory and mounted in the damn ceiling above the bed like a skylight.  Billy bets any of the Marvel movies would be magnificent on it, especially Guardians of the Galaxy or maybe The Winter Soldier. He’d tried to pull it up on Goody’s Amazon account but he’d shut it off and tossed the remote across the room, claiming that the background noise was too distracting. 

So, he drags the tip of the knife ever so carefully across the edge of that beautiful nova scar that means Goody managed to keep himself alive when Billy wasn’t there to look out for him as he determinedly keeps the hand captive. Billy figures it’s only fair that if Goody won’t let him watch a movie while he finishes whatever lawman work he’s doing on Faraday’s files, the least he can do is let Billy play with his body. 

“Take a break.”

“Go make something to eat, cher,” Goody murmurs dismissively. “If I can finish then it won’t be a break. It will be the whole night.”

Billy bites his lip. He’d forgotten how unsettling it could be to be so well known. 

Part of his success in life - from survival to his pursuit of NPMI - has been that no one has anything on him that can be manipulated beyond the obvious of his sister and nephew. When no one knows your habits, likes, dislikes, opinions, preferences, or personality, it’s pretty difficult to get under your skin in any way that doesn’t involve outright threats. 

Goody knows all of those things. Knows them and uses them to their best advantage, the utter asshole. When they were young, he'd found it annoying as hell since Billy could never find fault in the way Goody’s best advantage meant what was best for the both of them, together.  Billy has lost a lot of the memories of that to time so he keeps tripping over the same mistake over and over and not getting his way now that they're back together. Irritating gorgeous bastard. 

“Do you even have anything in your kitchen?”

“Mmm. We may be in the center of redneck country but the internet will still get your groceries delivered from the local Albertsons. Put an order in while you were still sleeping. I well recall the way to your heart.”

Billy snorts at that because he’s not wrong. “I figure if you were ever going to propose you’d do it in a fucking Kroger.”

“As if I would go down on a knee for you anywhere but Winn-Dixie, cher.” He rolls over at that and gives him a small smile. “But no, I thought I’d take you back to that bar in Ft. Benning, do it under that lamp post where we first spoke. I’m a sentimental sort that way.”

Billy rolls his eyes. “You would.”

“I would,” Goody agrees. “Which is why you need to let me finish. I can’t rightly marry you if you’re going to spend our wedded life in supermax but if you’re really bored, go on the Tiffany website and find yourself a ring you like. We’ll call it a placeholder.”

“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Robicheaux,” Billy says softly, sadly. Breakfast at Tiffany’s had never been his favorite Audrey Hepburn movie. Mickey Rooney’s fucking yellow face made him too angry and Audrey’s Holly made him too sad.

His movements aren’t as fluid as they were when they were young as Goody pushes up to grip the back of his neck firmly. He presses a kiss to his lips, hard and quick and just a little wet. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

He lets go and pulls back to pick up his phone, where it lies nearby on the bed. Billy watches as he taps the screen before handing it over. The blue header of the Tiffany website shines cheerfully up at him.

Billy can’t breathe. He cannot fucking breathe. It’s like the confined, dark space of that shipping container, the terrifying grip of a huge hand around his throat yet different somehow.This is a strange sort of suffocation that makes him feel like he’s bursting with light. “Goodnight.”

“When have I ever joked about how I love you, mon vainqueur? When we’re done, when we make this right, we can go back to Georgia and I’ll ask you properly. We’ll do all of it properly, with Yeon-mi and Jin-sung there when we make it legal, but we already know. I’ve been yours for half my life. I don’t see that changing, not for blood or paperwork. We always take what we can together, Billy. Why shouldn’t we take this too?”

Billy last cried when Yeon-mi gave birth, when he held that small crinkly bloody boy in his hands and knew that he was vulnerable again because he loved too much. He hated the feeling, like he was leaking and couldn’t shut it off. He still hates it but he loves it too. God, he feels like he’s going insane, too many opposing thoughts and feelings colliding in his fragile brain all at once. What he knows for sure is that he’s crying because it’s too much, he loves him too fucking much, and he doesn’t want to deny Goody the sight anymore than he had his sister. “No reason at all.” 

“Excellent.” Goody beams at him. He starts to lift his hand before dropping it, opting instead to lean in and kiss him again. 

This one is slow, though just as hard, precise and salty, licking into Billy’s mouth until he is dizzy and full of that bodily hunger that has never ceased to be at least a little confusing in the way it is so singular to Goody, his Goody. He’s ready to push Goody back onto his bed and fuck him into the mattress, when he pulls back. 

“Go pick something out for us both. My wallet’s on that little table next to the door. If you find something you like, make sure you use the Amex. I get points on all my purchases and something like this’ll probably go a long way towards covering the flight for the honeymoon we’re going to richly deserve by the time we close this case.” 

Billy nods, phone clutched in his hand, feeling like a stunned cow. He watches Goody shift back onto his stomach with the noticeable care that is the signature of navigating around a hard-on, before sliding off the bed and padding out of the bedroom.

He closes the door behind him and almost runs into the kitchen. It’s the farthest room from the bedroom and, of course, it’s where the food is. 

He finds himself standing in front of the coolness of the open fridge as he dials Yeon-mi’s number on his latest burner. She picks up on the third ring, sounding pleased and relieved. “Two calls in two days? Did I miss a holiday?”

He closes his eyes and lets the sound of her lovely voice and familiar Korean flood over him. “He wants to marry me.” There’s a long silence, so long that he thinks he lost the connection. “Sis?”

“Oh. Oh, my sweet boy.” She sounds like she’s going to cry. “I’m so happy for you.”

“It’s been a week.”

“It’s been twenty years.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth can can still catch the phantom tastes of fake orange flavoring and precum that lingered long after they left Dallas and the meeting with Goody's United States Attorney friend Josh. The knowledge of that Goody brought him into his house after everything he said and wrote down for the AUSA was matched to more than twenty murder cold cases crawls up his throat and forces its way free. “He knows what I’m doing.” 

“Yes he does.” 

He drops his head onto the edge of the freezer as the reality of his situation crashes down on him. He had gone into this ready to die. He still is. Any of his hits could end with him in a bodybag and it would be worth it but since he found Goody again, he cares about more than keeping his family safe and finishing his task. It’s still worth it - this fight, these kills - but for the first time in forever, he really does want live. He just doesn’t think he will, not even with Goody’s prosecutor friend in on it.

He knows he did that to himself by going after _them_ with sharp knives and sharper hate but it just feels so fucking unfair. After everything, after his whole life being one big loss after another in a cosmic game of chance, happiness is right there. It’s inches away and he probably won’t reach the end in one piece. 

“This can’t be right.” 

“This is the most right thing you could possibly do,” Yeon-mi corrects. “I told you then you shouldn’t have left in the first place. I told you to go back. I fucking told you he fucking-“ she breaks off as English mixes into her words, showing how deeply affected she truly is by the whole thing. He listens to her inhale deeply before beginning again. “You can accept that I love you unconditionally, that Jin-sung loves you unconditionally. You two had all that time together and now you have him back, like this, with everything,  and you still can’t accept that his love is unconditional too?”

“He isn’t obligated.”

“I will climb through the phone and shake you, I swear.” 

He stares into the dull yellow lightbulb of the fridge that Goody filled to bursting with food. For him.

“Would you care if I took his name?”

“No.” Her voice breaks and he can hear her tears. “Robicheaux Byeung-rok sounds beautiful.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, as he reaches into the fridge with his free hand. 

He’s drawn like a magnet to the carefully packaged crate of strawberries so red they remind him of the blood pumping from an open vein. A diet of rations and damaged goods in one world and fast food and gas station junk in another have given him a weakness for fresh produce. He remembers how Goody had laughed at him for eating raw cauliflower off the head in the grocery store but there’d always been fresh fruit and vegetables when he went shopping back when Billy had the Ft. Benning squat. Twenty years apart, and Goody doesn’t just remember - he _does_.

He closes his eyes against the strawberries wounding his heart. “Yeah. I think so too.”

“Dead drop me a picture of him, Billy. “

He groans. “You know you’re not using that term right.”

“I do but it sounds so much better than mail fraud.”

He didn’t mask his method the same way every time he mailed something to California. Sometimes he’d pay postage on a package in one state, and mail it out in another.  Sometimes he’d pick a town to put a fake address on and trade a blowjob  or (if it was urgent) pay junkies and hustlers even worse off than him to drop packages at the post office. Usually, he’d type up fake business envelopes and slide them in with outgoing mailbags in busy corporate office buildings, moving invisible through the floors as a just another Chinese delivery guy bringing some drone’s lunch. 

It worked, though, because according to Goody’s Marshal files, the FBI had two pieces of DNA - one from a hair left at that first scene and blood underneath the fingernails of  the 4th. Billy hadn’t realized his quarry had gotten his claws in him until he was two states away.  They had a picture of him leaving the site of his first kill too, but it was blurry and Goody had said he only knew, “Because I know you. I know your face. I know your jaw and your brow and your eyes. I know.”

It was enough to make a case, to notice his trend of target types, that it was the same person but nothing else. He’d grown out the black strands until they hung to his shoulders, grown a moustache and a bit of a beard, gained more than twenty pounds in fat and in muscle, and he was in no records. He had come to the US illegally, snuck out when the locals took down the cell of NPMI holding them. 

Yeon-mi had been taken away by the police. Billy had been on an outcall. She got a tourist visa, then a green card, then citizenship. He got a fake ID and driver’s license and here he was. He was a 45 year old man whose name existed nowhere but in the databanks of the North Korean government and the minds of three people. No. No that wasn’t right. There had been that man in the truck. Boyd, the soldier who brought him to Goody in a strange way. That made four, if Boyd still remembered. 

He wants that to change and if he can’t settle for the reality, he’ll take the hope.

“What kind of rings did they have? I don’t remember any more.”

“They were gold,” she says softly. “ I remember they were gold. Harabeoji got them in Seoul before the Japanese invaded.”

"Thanks." The picture is clearer now. When he thinks of his parents, he can better remember them with their interlaced fingers clutched so tight that their knuckles were white, sitting across from each other at their small kitchen table, the gold of their rings glinting in the light cast by the weak bulb. 

When he opens his eyes, the strawberries are still there but the color doesn’t hurt quite so much. "Are you happy, nuna?"

She chuckles in his ear. "Jin-Sung wants to go to college in South Dakota or Alaska. He wants to camp for a living. Did you know that's a thing you can get a degree in up there?"

It's a strange response but he waits. She always answers him if he's patient, even if it's not how he expects. He makes a humming noise that encourages her to continue. 

"I don't think I told you. Marco took us up to meet his parents last fall up in Mt. Shasta and we went hunting. He grew up weird that way." She laughs it off like they didn't grow up a world away, brainwashed and submissive, then trapped and beaten, as if Billy's life isn't driven by a hunt for actual human beings. "Jin-sung got this huge buck and Marco taught him how to gut and skin it right there in the woods and that was it. He was in love. He's like you; he likes his knives. Marco was so proud he got the head taxidermied and mounted at his apartment. He was insistent we use everything we could so my son is now the only sophomore whose room features a deer pelt rug and I swear, we had nothing but bulgogi until spring. Turns out it's better with venison than pork." She pauses for a long moment. When she speaks again he can hear her smiling into the phone. "He's been calling Marco Dad since they got back." 

"Good." He hasn't met Marco Urenda in the eight years Yeon-mi's been seeing him. He's never seen a picture. He knows the man is a former Navy pilot from Mt. Shasta who was in La Palma for a year contract with a small plane company when he met her and stayed when it was over because he couldn't bear to leave her and Jin-sung. Making that decision alone had been enough for Billy to like him. "You deserve that."

"So do you."

He doesn't answer that. Sometimes he's not so sure. He wants, it but deserve? 

"You do." She repeats firmly. "We both do, sweet boy. We earned it."

He makes a little noise that is neither assent or disagreement. "I'm gonna run out of minutes." 

"Well, call me when you get the ring. I am already planning a shower. Americans, right? So ridiculous but any excuse for a party."

That makes him smile. "It'll be awhile."

"Well you're lucky I'm patient."

"The luckiest." 

"Nah, cher, that'd be me." He turns and sees Goody leaned against the sink. "You're letting all the cold out.”

"Love you. I'll call you later."

"Is that him? You weren't kidding about the accent. Have fun. Love you too, sweet boy." She hangs up before he can and he pockets the burner. Goody is still staring at him. More specifically, at the strawberries.

"Thought you might like those. They're not really in season but." He shrugs."Gotta live while we're young."

“We’re not young.”

Goody scoffs at him. “Speak for yourself. I am a spry young buck in the spring of my life.” He points at the package in Billy’s hand. “You going to eat that?”

“Rather have you.”

“Both?” Goody teases, pulling him in by the sides of his shirt. “Both is good.”

Billy blushes. He can count on both hands the number of times he’s blushed in his adult life and pretty much all of them have been because of Goody. “Shut up.”

“I can’t like that movie too?” He nips under Billy’s chin, then farther to where his jaw and neck meet. “I watched it with my unit in Kandahar. And Monsters Inc, Shrek and Lilo and Stitch. Cartoons were easy to get and didn’t set anyone on edge.” He reaches up with his right hand as if to push a wayward strand behind his ear but instead, wraps it around his finger. He grins, bright and glinting gold in the glow of the refrigerator light. “I like your butt and your fancy hair.”

Billy smiles back. This. God he missed this, having someone who didn’t just know how to speak to him in the strange language he’d created for himself to understand his world but who wanted to. “You think it’s fancy?”

This is where Yeon-mi would laugh at him for finishing a movie quote, where Jin-sung would roll his eyes or a stranger in a Laundromat or a bar would tilt their head. Instead, Goody pulls him forward, away from the cold air and pushes the fridge door shut and counter-quotes with “I see people. I see you.”

Billy gives him a smile at that, weak and maybe a little shaky because yeah, he remembers seeing that one together. They’d driven all the way up to Atlanta to go see it together. No one would even look at a pair of homos cuddled up in the back of a late show at the LeFont watching the millionth screening of Titanic. He’d loved that stupid movie, melted for the same things he’d hated in other tragic love stories like Romeo and Juliet, and Goody remembered. 

Billy wants to marry him so he can have his whole life to get used to this - Goodnight remembering him. He just… Fuck. He’s crossed too many lines for this and the desire to have that future is cut through with the knowledge that he almost certainly he can’t have it. The realization hits him so violently it makes his muscles ache.

“How can you see me and still love me?”

“Love Story? Really?” Goody shakes his head then quotes back. “Love don’t make things nice, it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. We’re here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit.” 

“You missed some of that one.” Billy can’t help but point out. He tries but he just can’t resist. The delivery’s not right either. Nicholas Cage’s delivery was loud and almost violent and more than a little angry. When Goody says those things, they sound like a promise. 

“I got the important parts.” 

“Goody.”

“The thread’s there for a case, a big one, RICO statutes definitely apply. Joshua’ll get you immunity.” He presses their foreheads together. “If you want it, we can build a life. Just tell me you want tell me that’s what you want.”

Billy drops his head onto the warm solid shelf of Goody’s shoulder. He wraps his arms tightly around Goody’s back and allows himself to dig his fingers into the muscles he finds there. “I do.”

“That’s all I need to know, cher.” He grins into Billy’s hair. “Deputy Marshal Rocks has a nice ring to it. Ryan Gosling would play me in the movie.”

“Stick with Robicheaux. Gosling’s good but I don’t think he could pull it off.”

A deep line appears between Goody’s brows. “I want to be your family.”

“You are.” Billy promises because that’s true. It’s been true for nearly half his life. Distance and silence didn’t change that. “So let’s stick with Robicheaux. Yeon-mi’s only going to use her maiden name for a few more years anyway and Jin-sung’s a better legacy than me.” Leave the rest of the Song history in Korea, he thinks. Let all of it stay across the Pacific, buried and gone. Let them put to rest the ugly past for a new existence where the only Song left is a young man whose life has been so rich that he can go without _for fun_. It’s so much better that way. “Has a better ring to it, anyway.”

Goody looks poleaxed and hungry at the same time. “Billy Rocks,” he breathes, licking his lips like he used to when Billy would touch him just right, lick his lips just so.

He clicks his tongue and shakes his head as he pulls back. He doesn’t go far though, just enough to tug at the drawstring of Goody’s sleep pants. “Try again.”

“Billy Robicheaux,” Goody whispers, awestruck.

Goody’s never used his given name, even after Billy delicately gave the information to him like the family heirloom it was. He could but the one time Billy had asked about it, Goody had said “If you wanted me to call you that, you’d tell me. You’re not particularly shy about what you want, mon vainqueur.” It took a long time before he realized Goody understood that Billy Rocks is the person he’s made himself, the man he really is. He probably should have known that Billy Robicheaux is the man he wants to be.

Billy rewards him by shoving down the waistband and Goody pounces. He’s never been the patient sort when it comes to making love. He can sit in a sniper’s nest for days without moving but as soon as his switch is flipped he’s the most impatient person Billy’s ever met. 

They kiss their way into a heap on the kitchen floor. Somehow, Goody ends up on top of him, naked from the waist down but with his faded Army t-shirt still on, if tugged up off his head and hooked around the back of his neck exposing his chest. Billy’s still in almost all his clothes but his pants are open and his shirt is off.

“One day,” Goody says as he fumbles in the pockets of his discarded sleep pants for the condom and small tube of lube he stuck int he pocket. “You’re going to retire.”

Billy quirks a brow at that. Its very optimistic of his boy. But he waits, watching as Goody’s talented hands cover him, get him wet and ready. He’s had a life that trained him to be patient where Goody can’t. 

“When you do,” Goody says, reaching back for all of half a second to prep himself (which always freaks Billy out because for him that wouldn’t be even close to enough) and groaning. “Fuck, cher, I’m going have you in me bare.” He beams down beatifically as he pulls his fingers free and sinks down on Billy’s cock he’s powerless to do anything else. 

“Like this,” Goody says softly. 

He drapes his body forward to press their chests together so they’re breathing in sync. Billy keeps his hands on Goody’s hips mostly to keep from flying off the floor and into the void of space. 

“You’ll be inside me just like this but nothing between us. No rubber or plastic or work or law or bullshit. Just you and me and this.” Billy feels open and raw as Goody sips kisses from his lips between words. “You’ll make me leak your cum for days after we get married, Mr. Robicheaux.” His hips roll with the sinuous grace of a dancer. 

Goody likes to be fucked so much he doesn’t usually take the lead which is fine by Billy. He likes to be in control of his body. Always. 

Except, sometimes, when he’s with Goody. 

With Goody, Billy has a security that allows him to fall into moments like this, where he allows himself to get lost the chaotic bliss of touching and being touched without fear. He is free to fuck up into Goody’s rhythm as best he can, fist his hand in the shirt bunched back of Goody’s neck and hang on for the ride.

“Yes,” Goody hisses as one thoughtless snap of Billy’s hips lands in perfect concert with the landing of a long, smooth slide down his cock. “Jesus God, Billy, I want it so bad; you don’t know.”

“Tell me?” Billy asks, putting his hand on Goody’s cheek to roughly pet his beard. He loves listening to Goody talk when he's falling apart like this.

“I want…ah. Fuck. Yeah, Billy. I want to know we have the each other.” He pushes to sit up straight and plants his palms flat on Billy’s stomach and starts to speed up, sweating and desperate. “Want-want my, oh fuck, my husband’s cum in me all the time. Then I can’t forget. I can’t,” He closes his eyes, panting with exertion. “I can’t forget for one second that you’re mine and I’m yours. I’m yours, mon vainqueur. Mon amour, mon coeur, ma fucking vie, s'il vous plait.”

Billy lasts under that assault about five seconds before he reaches out, wraps his hand around Goody’s cock and starts stroking blind. He’s coming to the sound of Goody’s broken French and clenching hole and the his beautiful, blissful face. The hot wet splatter of Goody’s orgasm landing on his stomach and chest is what ends him over himself. He can’t handle the pleasure alone so he drags Goody down to him, silencing him with frantic, digging kisses. 

Goody laughs into his mouth as he goes over himself. It’s the kind of orgasm Billy forgot he missed, giggly, like a shaken can of soda being cracked open instead of an explosion of intensity. He falls back to the floor with a thud when he’s fizzled out. He really wasn’t that hungry before they fucked.

Goody is looking down at him from his chest, grinning. Billy smiles back up at him for all of a minute before his stomach rumbles traitorously.

“You ready for those strawberries now?”

Billy snorts. “That is not going to cut it after that. You got any meat in that fridge?” He asks, which earns him a smart kiss.

“I’m sure we can find something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
>   * So, I personally don't care what your stance is on hunting and guns but it is a thing and if you do it right, you can eat what you kill and venison is freaking yummy. There is actually a blogger called the Korean Huntress who is a Korean-American woman who likes to hunt and then takes what she kills and adapts it to cultural recipes. Thats where I got the idea for bulgogi from! You can check out [her recipe and experience right here](https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2016/9/21/a-korean-huntress-venison-recipe/).
>   * IDK about in Texas in a lot of other large grocery chains you can order your groceries online and have them delivered without Amazon. Its cool :D 
>   * I checked hunting season in California. It varies from region to region but in Mt. Shasta there probably would've been a time around fall that they could have gone in fall /o\\.
>   * Movies quoted in this chapter: Breakfast at Tiffany's Love Story, Lilo and Stitch, Titanic, Moonstruck and Se7en
>   * One of the many magical things I learned on my trip to Alaska is that at some of the universities there(and maybe other places IDK) you really can major in outdoor studies which is freaking a Bachelors in camping for all intents and purposes(except for how of course its not because every degree is more complicated than that). It's NUTS. 
> 



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